Nebex CEO: NASA wants a commercial space economy. Here’s how it can enable one

In July, SpaceX stopped accepting new rideshare bookings beyond late 2028. In October, NASA released its request for proposals for commercial space stations to succeed the soon-to-be de-orbited International Space Station (ISS).

Taken together, the ISS’s retirement and the squeeze on launch availability creates a real problem for many “new space” startups that built their venture business plans on continued cheap rides to orbit.

While alternatives to SpaceX exist, they are limited and spotty: Rocket Lab’s Electron offers dedicated small-satellite launches, while ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn serve larger payloads (although both are temporarily grounded: Vulcan since February and New Glenn since April). New competitors are advancing too: Isar Aerospace secured a launch contract with Planet, Stoke Space raised $1 billion and is targeting an initial launch in 2027, Rocket Lab’s larger Neutron rocket is expected to debut in 2027 as well, and Skyroot had a successful launch on its first attempt. But still, most, if not all, of these options remain unproven.

Starship’s first orbital flight in September may eventually ease the overall launch bottleneck, but it’s not certain that the increased capacity will be made available to the third parties that are depending on it.

For a startup space economy that scaled around frequent, inexpensive rideshare slots from one company, the challenge now is how soon the alternatives can deliver dependable access to orbit at comparable scale. While developing new rockets and replacing the ISS present different operational hurdles, both run into the same underlying market gap: building for space is extraordinarily capital-intensive, and the industry lacks a discovery mechanism to turn existing global demand into the committed orders and upfront capital........

© Fortune